Book one of the trilogy

The Weight of Winning

Not what it takes to build a company. What it costs to keep one.

Greg Ciupek

Seven days before Christmas 2018, I was told I had a week to return fifty-three thousand dollars. There was one thousand in the company account.

I did not return it in seven days. I repaid it in monthly instalments, for seven months, to a man who came to the company for the money.

This is not a book about how to build a company. It is a book about what it costs to keep one. About three months in which ten people worked without being paid and did not leave. About the twenty-first grant application, after which the answer came in an hour. About firing people who had stayed with you when they did not have to.

You will not find a shortcut here. You will find the bill.

It started at the roadside, with watermelons. I was fourteen.

Book one of a trilogy. With a foreword by Jan Paweł Tomaszewski.